Robert Wood, the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard and member of the team that created the robot, said in an interview:

“Well, robots in general are complex mechanisms: They have articulation, some number of degrees of freedom, they must interact with the world. So we picked a robot not just because we work on robotics, but because they are traditionally difficult to make and control. In this case, it is just a four-legged robot whose body and mechanisms are assembled through this folding process.”

Well, that’s cool and all. But why is this important?

“Imagine a ream of dozens of robotic satellites sandwiched together so that they could be sent up to space and then assemble themselves remotely once they get there,” lead author Sam Felton, a doctoral student at the Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard told The Gazette. “They could take images, collect data, and more.”

It seems that there is a future for these little robots, and only time will tell when humans become, well, no longer necessary.